A satisfying, informative memoir of the perseverance and bravery necessary to survive a painful illness.
A harrowing journey into and out of colonic disease.
California-based electrical engineer and marketing specialist Sardana’s grueling, 20-year odyssey battling chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) began when the author first had intestinal discomfort and rectal bleeding during the summer of 1990. A series of exploratory examinations revealed ulcerative colitis as the culprit, which is a principal component of IBD, an involuntary, autoimmune response to pathogens present in the gut. Medications helped, but the inflammation became a chronic condition, as did his yo-yoing weight and mood swings. Raised in India, Sardana describes many Indian traditions throughout the book, including food and social customs and marital rites, though his battle with IBD remains the centerpiece as he describes his relentless worsening condition, leading to the successful excision of his colon and rectum. After the birth of his two children, however, Crohn’s disease emerged, and its ensuing complications ushered in a new host of associative troubles such as depression, insomnia, and diabetes, all of which the author controlled with more than 30 daily medications. He comprehensively describes surgeries with intricate narration, figure drawings, and postoperative photographic imagery, which may prove too graphic for sensitive readers. Also included is the preoperative and postoperative play-by-play from his experiences with the incapacitating illness alongside an exploration of alternative healing therapies, such as meditation, yoga, and acupuncture, which boosted his severely deteriorated quality of life as the ordeal progressed yet eventually became manageable. Reflecting on his own hopeful prognosis, his text offers compassionate understanding, personal coping mechanisms, and well-coordinated comfort to other “comrades” with a core message of hope, survival, and coexistence with the intimidating condition. Sardana remains a surprisingly grounded narrator throughout his two-decade ordeal, reflecting that “there is nothing like a full-blown medical crisis to make you fully alive to the precariousness of your existence.” A reliable spokesman and treatment advocate for the disease, his current proactive awareness campaign includes a website and personal appearances.
A satisfying, informative memoir of the perseverance and bravery necessary to survive a painful illness.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1497457003
Page Count: 176
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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